‘Daddy Sharpe’ an engaging fiction chock-full of historical facts

NATIONAL HERO Samuel Sharpe was a complex character, for while he was a Baptist deacon who was given much latitude by his Baptist keepers to preach the word of the Lord, he was also preaching rebellion. The uprising which he inspired, but did not start, was to expedite the emancipation from chattel slavery in the British West Indies.

Yet, not much is known of his life, as the narratives are invariably about the part he played in the Baptist Rebellion of December 1831, and the fate that befell those who participated in it. And since there is no extensive records through which people may peruse to know the man called Daddy Sharpe by his followers, it was perhaps why Fred W. Kennedy conceived and manifested his book, Daddy Sharpe – A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Samuel Sharpe by Himself 1832.

Ian Randle Publishers says, “ Daddy Sharpe is a unique work of Caribbean fixture. It is the result of five years of historical research, details of which have been used to recreate a narrative of the life of one of Jamaica’s national heroes, Sam Sharpe.

“Locked in prison awaiting a sentence of certain execution, Sam Sharpe retells the story of his life in the first-person narrative, beginning with his boyhood days at Cooper’s Hill in St James and ending with his surrender to the authorities after his defeat in the great Jamaican slave revolt of 1831. These flashbacks are interwoven with present-time musings while he is in prison.”

The 410-page hardcover, dedicated to Kennedy’s three daughters, is divided into four parts – Cooper’s Hill, The Bay, Croydon Estate, The Bush – and an epilogue, in which Methodist minister, Reverend Henry Bleby, who witnessed Sharpe’s execution, recount Daddy Sharpe’s last moments before he was executed at noon on May 23, 1832 in the marketplace in Montego Bay.

“In a few moments the executioner had done his work and the noble-minded originator of this unhappy revolt had ceased to exist … The sun disappeared behind the clouds and the darkness came over the land. Suddenly by his loss, we all left the town square which some likened to Golgatha, the place of a skull,” Bleby writes.

Two years and three months after Sharpe’s execution, slavery was abolished on Friday, August 1. “I went to the Baptist Church in Montego Bay that day and offered thanks to God for persons like Samuel Sharpe, whose piety, patriotism, and self-sacrifice helped to bring about the emancipation of his people. These pages are published in his loving memory,” Mrs Samuel Sharpe, the wife of Daddy Sharpe’s keeper, says in the epilogue.

In the foreword, Kennedy writes, “This work is an artistic interpretation of the life of Sam Sharpe … It is also the story, on a more symbolic level, of a people who fought for freedom and later broke the chains of slavery. I trust that the reader will find the events both informative from a historical perspective and entertaining from a literary one.”

Written by someone who “has a great passion for Caribbean literature and history”, and who was principal of St George’s College in Kingston, Daddy Sharpe certainly has high entertainment and historical/literary value. The story-telling is so engaging that at points it seems like the fictional is factual.

“One night I was seated in front of the Negro houses in a circle with Tacky, Mama and two of my best friends, Robert Gardner and Thomas Dove. Tacky was the oldest slave on the property and he loved to tell African stories of the famous spider, Anancy. He was an Akan Negro from the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana), advanced in the years, but young in spirit.

“I remember his deep black skin which runs tight all over his muscles and his woolly head of hair silvered with age. When he told us stories, he bent over, leaning on a crooked logwood stick, his eyes shining like fireflies in the night, his voice strong like Thunder,” Sharpe recalls.

Throughout the narrative Kennedy goes into Sam Sharpe’s psyche with full force and comes out with much pathos, humanising Sharpe, exposing his vulnerabilities, and highlighting his commitment to freedom. “All I wish was to be free. All I wished was to enjoy the liberty which I find in the Bible is the birthright of every man,” he says in his final address.

On the night before he was hanged, Sharpe writes, “I now embrace the loneliness of the night. I pray for strength to face the morrow, my last dawn on this blessed Earth. I will offer my martial body to the hangman even though my blood still runs vigorous through my veins.

“I will do this because I would rather die than remain a slave. Before God, my brethren, the stars, the moon, the sun, the sky the rivers, I know beyond everything else that it is wrong for one man to own another as his chattel.”

For every man and woman who loves Jamaica’s history and literature it might just be wrong if you do not have a copy of D addy Sharpe on your bookshelf.